The time and money saved on certain tasks are vital for busy,
resource-strapped startups. Here’s why you should look at
automation as a force-multipier for your marketing efforts.

August 31, 2018 4
min read

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Startups have an overabundance of information and tools at their
fingertips. Ignoring what’s on offer, though, can mean missing out
on something hugely beneficial. Marketing automation is often a
prime example.

The time and money saved on certain tasks are vital for busy and
resource-strapped startups. There are many reasons why you
should look at automation as a boost for your startup’s marketing
efforts.

Automation saves time and money.

In the early days of startups, the right hires can make or break
the company. Hiring can be expensive, and even without a new salary
taken into account, it is also a drain on time and resources.
Automating some of your tasks gives you back the budget that could
have been spent on hiring someone new.

A Lightspeed hiring report
for 2018 showed that half of startups reported missing their
hiring goal for 2017 due to the lack of a recruitment team.
Startups simply don’t have dedicated HR professionals helping them
bring talent onboard. Therefore, being able to automate tasks
rather than recruit a new person can save a significant amount of
time and money for a cash-conscious startup.

Even with bringing a marketing strategy from outside in-house,
marketing automation allows your existing team members to save
time, as well. Social media campaigns, for instance, take time and
skill, but there are a number of tasks that go into a successful
campaign that can be automated to relieve time constraints.

Take posting, for example. To ensure the best time zone or
demographic for a post requires time and research on the part of
your employees. Once they’ve worked this out, they then need to
write the copy, create the image, add a link, etc. before they can
call the task complete. Only this is one post for one particular
channel, and each subsequent post can require the same work.
Marketing automation tools can take away this drain on time and
resources.

Automation can help boost lead generation efforts.

Prospects are hugely important for any startup, but do you have
enough time to nurture them? Having enough time to dedicate to
potential customers or users is crucial for growing
startups. With more time comes the ability to reach out to a
bigger audience and move potential clients through your sales
journey more easily.

Instead of hiring someone to do this, marketing automation is
ready and waiting. Automation can help you create a valuable
database of leads by automatically gathering information about
potential clients. Having this data at hand can be a huge benefit
for your startup as well as tell you a lot about your marketing
strategies. Whether it’s your audience’s interaction with your
brand, how to segment your audience for future marketing plans, or
the style of your posts, being able to collect all of this data and
use it is hugely beneficial for marketing at an early stage.

Automation levels the playing field.

Your startup may be agile and innovative, but often you are up
against massive leaders in your industry. Employing marketing
automation can help bring your competitors down a peg or two,
putting your startup closer to a more level playing field.

One survey showed that half
of small businesses are doing their own marketing. Therefore, a
marketing automation tool can relieve a lot of the pressure and
make up for a lack of skills that make running your marketing
internally a time-consuming endeavor. Most modern marketing
automation tools are responsive, easy to use, and highly
accessible. This means that once set up correctly, to your
specific needs, your startup won’t have to worry about not having
its best chance at a successful marketing campaign.

Marketing automation holds a number of potentials for startups.
Ultimately, time and money are the real life-savers for startups,
with time or money spent on marketing activities or onboarding new
hires being saved by a sophisticated software set up
specifically for your business’s needs. These two common pain
points, once solved, can open up a wider world of marketing
opportunities for your startup as you grow.